Changing together: brokering constructive conversations

Changing together: brokering constructive conversations

Future of care No 3 – May 2017

Wicked issues – complex problems that cannot be solved in a traditional fashion – are endemic in the NHS. They are nothing new. But the current challenges facing the NHS, social care and others are arguably the most ‘wicked’ yet. There is a danger that the new models of care discussed in the Five Year Forward View will be implemented in ways which fail to recognise their inherent complexity.

Sustainability and Transformation Plans are a way of having a focused, honest, trusted conversations about some of the ‘elephants in the room’, some of the ‘big ticket items’, the difficult choices, that need to be resolved.

Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England, 2016

This report summarises the findings from a research study which sought to explore how we can better broker constructive conversations with citizens to tackle wicked issues when implementing new models of care. The research was undertaken by the Social Care Institute for Excellence, working in partnership with PPL and the Institute for Government and funded by the Health Foundation’s Policy Challenge Fund.